Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (11 page)

“Nothing since your break-in yesterday.”

“You mean you’re not working on it? Pickler’s got to have some connection with the Lucarellis or the Menendez family. If he’s willing to sit in jail for a murder he didn’t commit—”

“You are not our intern,” I interrupted. “You’re a college senior who needs to concentrate on her last few months of school.”

“I know that. But after graduation. Does Adrian know I volunteered?”

“This is not Adrian’s choice. It’s mine. As a mother and a partner, I get two votes to his one.”

“What about my vote?”

“You’re the plaintiff in this case. You don’t get a vote.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mr. Monk Takes a Day Off

I
can’t tell you how nice it was sleeping in on Saturday. I didn’t even look at the clock, just reveled in the luxury of not having to be in the office. In my half-awake stupor, I realized how spoiled I’d been all these years. As hard as Monk and I worked on cases, it was never a strict schedule, having to show up exactly on time day after day, year after year, doing the same thing. And I’m not even talking about the people who wind up getting shot by their crazed coworkers.

I was jolted fully awake at 8:35 by the phone on my nightstand. It was Lieutenant Devlin. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, responding to my grogginess. “I forgot it was the weekend.”

“That’s okay. You’re working the weekend.”

“I have to. Every day we don’t catch him makes it less likely we will. Do you guys have anything new?”

I sat up and adjusted my pillows. “Adrian thinks Wyatt may have had help.”

Devlin growled. “That’s what I kept telling him. Any lone survivor needs to be investigated. Sarabeth . . .”

“It’s not so simple. He has this blind spot for Sarabeth.”

“Well, I don’t,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll check a little deeper, see if any neighbors or friends ever saw her with
Noone. I can also let her accidentally find out I’m looking. That kind of pressure can be good. Let the bad guys know you’re interested and they’ll make mistakes.”

“I’m not saying she’s a bad guy. I’m just saying Adrian won’t go there.”

“I’m familiar with his blind spots,” Devlin said. “Like the time he falsely accused Ellen Morse of murder because she owned a store that sold fossilized poop.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Looking back, I’m kind of amazed that relationship lasted as long as it did.”

Devlin got off the phone to rally her troops. I finally rallied the strength to get out of bed and put on my bathrobe. I pushed the button on the coffeemaker, fork-split my English muffin, and put it in to toast, then performed my daily hide-and-seek with the
San Francisco Examiner
(in the azaleas to the left of the porch). And all this time, despite it being my day off, I was thinking about work.

Before I even unfolded the paper, I was on the phone. By then it was after nine and, according to the rules of etiquette I’d been raised with, the phone was fair game. “Daniela, hi. It’s Natalie. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Wake me? Dear, I’m heading off to the County Office Building in Redwood City. What can I do for you?”

“On a Saturday?”

“That’s the same thing the assistant DA said. Why does everyone think justice takes time off?”

So much for my guilt-free weekend. “If you can take a second, I’d like to talk about the case.”

“Mr. Monk had a breakthrough?” Daniela asked, her
voice rising. “That’s great news. Henry’s been rotting away for days.”

“Uh, no,” I had to admit. “No breakthrough.”

“Oh.” Her voice lowered. “I was hoping you’d have some brilliant insight for me by now. I mean, that’s why I hired you people. Not that you promised a miracle in your brochure. But you did lead me to believe . . .”

“We often do deliver miracles,” I said. “But each case is different. Daniela, I was wondering if I could have access to the Pickler house again? If you remember, we cut short our examination of the premises.”

“When we went over to talk to the drug boss’ floozy. Of course. I’ll have a messenger drop by with a key and the access codes. I’ll do it right now.”

It seems everyone was working on Saturday, messengers included. “That would be great. We have Pickler’s permission, right?”

“Access to the home during incarceration is included in my firm’s boilerplate contract with clients, although he may not realize it was included.”

“Are you okay with me going in?”

“I’m okay.” There was something about the way she emphasized the “I’m.”

“How about Henry? Is he okay with it?”

She laughed, a melodious cackle. “Henry has annoyed the hell out of me. This would be so much easier if he told me something. Anything. So, go ahead. I’d love to find out what he’s hiding.” Daniela Grace, it seemed, was someone you didn’t want to annoy. “Of course, whatever you find is
included under client-attorney privilege. The police can’t be informed.”

“Got it. No police.”

“No matter what you find.”

“Got it.” This was all part of our brave new world. Only time would tell if it was a world we could live in and still hold on to our souls. “Why are you meeting the assistant DA?”

“I’m trying to get the charges dropped. Henry’s GSR test came back negative.” That was cop talk for gunshot residue. “Combined with the police failure to find the weapon, it might be enough to get him released. Barring a Monk and Teeger miracle, it’s the best we can hope for.”

“Don’t rule out the miracle,” I said in a confident tone I didn’t feel. “Good luck with your meeting.”

Waiting for Daniela’s messenger gave me half an hour of Saturday leisure. I didn’t call Monk to join me today. He had a session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Bell, postponed from yesterday when Julie’s quasi-arrest interrupted our schedule. Monk was down to one session a week now, except for emergencies, like his wedding anniversary or a tough case or a particularly traumatic breakfast. On average, I suppose it was more like one and three-quarter times a week.

This house search was something I felt I could do. Julie and Daniela had both made me feel guilty about our lack of progress. And I was a licensed PI, after all. I didn’t need Monk with me every step of the way.

I parked on the street, one house down from the Pickler residence. This was an old habit I didn’t feel like breaking, even though my visit was technically legit. I used the keys and the alarm codes, then walked into the pristine time machine—
the entry hall with its shag carpeting, the sunken living room with its circular fireplace, the dining room with its clear plastic chairs, and the harvest gold kitchen.

Monk had already examined these rooms, so I started by going down half a flight to the lower section of the split-level where I found the master bedroom. It was divided precisely into two halves, each with a blond wood dresser with flat drawer fronts and no handles. Very seventies Scandinavian. There was a mirror above each dresser and a little seating area and walk-in closet for each half of the couple. In the middle was a king bed, the one communal part of the room, perfectly made and tucked in like a soldier’s cot.

The next thing I noticed about the bed was the pillow arrangement. Two sets of two pillows, as if Pickler’s wife had just walked out this morning. I have to tell you, I was touched by the sight. The woman had been gone eight months and still he preserved her side of the bed, as if she might return any second.

As for the rest of the room, I didn’t frame the view but I tried to be just as thorough—not that it did much good. The wife’s walk-in closet was empty and perfectly clean. Henry’s closet seemed like an ordinary man’s closet, if the man had OCD and kept everything on identical wooden hangers spaced evenly across the bars. The drawers were just as neat and organized. And, to my disappointment, there was nothing stashed in the bottom of the sock drawer. Come on, people. Isn’t that what a sock drawer is for?

I even checked under the bed, something I never do at home, since my vacuum wand doesn’t reach all the way and I don’t want to be reminded of the multiplying dust bunnies.
Of course there were no dust bunnies under Henry Pickler’s bed, just a plastic bin filled with a white winter comforter.

The only item of any interest was a framed wedding photo sitting on the blond wood table by Henry’s bedside. It showed the couple in the first moments of their five-year marriage, facing the camera, arm in arm. Henry smiled sheepishly while Becky looked happy and at ease. She was a shortish woman, almost as slight and trim as her husband, with sharp features that promised not to age very gracefully. This was the only photograph in the room and once again I was touched by the man’s devotion to his wayward wife.

Beyond the bedroom was Henry’s office. I intended to be just as focused here as I’d been in the bedroom but, to be honest, I was out of my element. Henry was a freelance Web site designer, and I knew next to nothing about this. The office was predictably organized and neat. A huge Apple monitor sat on an even huger curved desktop. There was no clutter. But all four walls were covered with corkboards, ten of them, all neatly organized with printouts of projects, photos, and swatches of fabric and color chips, plus details of the Web sites he was working on. One of them was decorated with beaches and sunsets and a central image of the Taj Mahal. It seemed to be the inspiration for some travel site.

I wasn’t at all surprised by the corkboards. People with OCD tend to be very visual. Monk had had a corkboard on his bedroom wall for almost a dozen years, adding to it, taking away from it, as he slowly figured out the most important case of his life, his wife’s murder. The physicality of the clues and photos and clippings and reports helped him internalize the facts. It’s a gift and a curse, as my partner likes to say.
Everything in your line of sight has to be symmetrical and even. The upside to that is you’re attuned to the smallest things being out of place. In Henry’s case, staring at his corkboards . . . I had no idea what might be out of place.

From the boards, I turned to the file cabinet, a two-level vertical type where you pull out the drawers and are facing the long side of the files with the tabs lined up in front of you. They were in alphabetical order, of course, mostly old projects and taxes and one surprisingly boring file labeled
Personal
, which didn’t seem to contain anything noteworthy. I don’t know what I’d been expecting to find—perhaps something filed under
D
for drug dealers. (I actually looked under
D.
) That was the moment I realized what a mistake it had been to come here without Monk. I’m sure he could have found something.

As I pushed myself up from the lower drawer, my right shoulder nudged the edge of the desk, which jiggled and nudged the mouse sitting to the left of the keyboard. A few seconds later and the humongous monitor came to life. It startled me. But then I recalled how Henry had been arrested out in the field, without having a chance to come back in and turn off his system.

I found myself staring at the frozen screen image of a Facebook page. Staring back at me was the smiling face of Becky Pickler.

It was framed in a picture on her Facebook Timeline. Once again I was touched, but also a little creeped out. I guess the lesson here was that when you leave your husband, you should also remember to unfriend him. Unless you want him following you every time you have breakfast with
a friend or repost a cat video—or think about going out with a man.

The picture on the screen was from several months ago, far down on Becky’s Wall. Easter Sunday to be precise. It was a solo shot of her on a rugged coastline, casually posing beside a towering pine. Behind her was a blue-gray evening sky, somewhere around dusk. A sliver of the moon floated low in the background sky, like a Cheshire cat grin. The reason I knew it was Easter was deductive logic; her post date combined with her comment: “Easter weekend with a new friend. I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much. He’s Australian, working here on a visa. When I get to know him better, I’ll send one of him.” Below the post were half a dozen comments from old friends, telling her not to be such a tease and asking when was she coming back to visit.

I took the mouse and tried scrolling up the page to something more recent. But the screen was frozen, which was just as well. I should try to avoid doing anything to alert our Web site expert that I’d been on his system.

I scanned the room again, secure that I was leaving the office just as I found it. Then I went through the door into a double-bay garage and glanced around the wall for a light switch. Just moments into my search, an overhead light went on. My immediate reaction was that Pickler had installed a motion detector. How very thoughtful. And then I saw that the light was part of the garage door system—and that the garage door was slowly going up. The sound of an engine purred outside in the drive.

My instinct was to run and hide. That’s always my first instinct. But the problem with an OCD home is that
everything is so neat and symmetrical that there’s often no place to go. I wasted precious seconds, frozen, as the door continued to rise. Then I ducked back inside the house.

You would think I’d have headed straight for the front door. I probably should have. Except I was curious just who this could be. Pickler was in jail. And Daniela wouldn’t have possession of her client’s garage door opener. In fact, no one would have had the opener, except maybe Becky Pickler. Was that it? Had Becky heard about her husband’s arrest? Was she finally coming home? This would be my chance to meet her.

I was two rooms away in the master bedroom, when the door between the garage and the office opened and a voice called out. “Hello? Who’s here? I know someone’s here.” That’s another problem with an OCD homeowner. They always know when there’s someone’s there. The voice was Henry Pickler’s.